


The Banality of Evil

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (a bit), About as Dark as it Ever Gets, Addiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Sign Language, Blood Drinking, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Castiel's Grace, Dark Castiel, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester First Time, Demon Blood, Demon Blood Addiction, Don't Like Don't Read, Dubious Consent is Probably Not With Who You Think It Is, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Grace Addiction, Heaven's Plan, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Manipulative Castiel, One Shot, Plans, Sam Winchester Has Powers, Sam Winchester Saves Dean Winchester, Season 3 Finale, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 03-04 Hiatus, Season/Series 04, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Stand Alone, Survivor Guilt, Survivor Processing, Tortured Dean, Vessel Dean, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:39:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: AU S3-Hiatus-S4.Sam had a plan. And Sam's plans rarely fail without some pretty massive intervention.(Please see notes, as they are important.)





	The Banality of Evil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirensnares](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirensnares/gifts).



> All right. Listen. For some of us, none of this was a joyride. Season 4 was actually trauma city for this writer. I've also survived something close to these events (I mean, without the SPN canon plot points). So, I can't emphasize this enough: **This is survivor fic**. I almost didn't post this.
> 
> This fic utilizes the "Breaking of the Fellowship" and "The Darkest Hour" TV tropes. These are tropes I have always used in my brain, since I was quite small. They are tropes that we now see on SPN all the time, but this is the first time in my life I'm going where my brain needs to go with this trope in writing. 
> 
> This is specifically about the first time the tropes were used, and it is AU, and it a fic for processing. I'm dealing with some things, and putting my feels about them into writing. The fact that it stars these characters...is for the fandom. It's not a dig, it's just a story I needed to write, now that I'm back, and re-processing. And it's not perfect, and it could have been a lot longer and darker than it is. Season 3-4 were painful as hell. Here's some writing about it.
> 
> I never would have had the courage to post this without the help of my friends, including sirensnares, so it's for them even if it's ...well, how it is.
> 
> This plot is a condensed version of a subplot that almost took over another one of my AUs. So, this is sort of an adultier adult version of that subplot, 5 years later and with me having experienced more trauma. Whee fun.

Sam spills out all over the place four and a half weeks before Dean’s deal comes due. He just can’t hold anything in anymore, not anything, not now. 

_I need to give you everything. Please._ He says it with his eyes, and Dean starts to shake. The unanswerable something is there in the room with them and they both know Dean wants to be able to say yes.

He wants to be able to tell Sam he can still give him something pure. But the truth is he’s hearing the hellhounds and the time for purity is long past.

Dean clears his throat and says, hoarse and rough, “Yeah, Sam,” and he looks into his brother’s eyes and says, _I see you._

He will give this to Sam, as many times as Sam needs it, as many times as he needs to take something.

*~*~*

The nights are long and slow, and they fall into a rhythm in those last days, but they know there will never be enough time for Sam to memorize Dean in the way he needs to, so desperately. Needing to know every inch of his brother’s body, and yet hold in all the pain and grief and everything that Sam cannot change. Decisions made and deals reached that were never in Sam’s control. The things he thinks about as the nights move on, and it’s never enough, and he needs that in a way, that insatiability, because it is also part of how he knows Dean, and knows himself.

Sam wants to stop hunting, wants to stop the world, wants to claim Dean as his, back from the abyss.

He wants to hate Dean for this, this decision that was so much about Sam as well in the end, that Sam would never again be himself and Dean--Dean will never be free again, will never be at all, and Sam has to not hate him, they don’t have time for that now, there isn’t time. 

_Please, Dean, I have to…_

And it was always there, the need, the need to have everything about each other, to know it all and hold it all close and safe-not-safe, not-safe-at-all. Nothing will ever be safe again, and they both know that.

Safety was never theirs.

But this is. Oh, this is. This is theirs, made over the years, and Sam runs his hands all over Dean and Dean holds everything in, tries not to breathe or move at all, just wants to be--be--be--

Just tries to make it one more day, hounds howling and vision going dark with the sight of every demon’s face.

In their motel rooms at night, it is just the two of them, and Sam’s face is clear, his eyes bright. And that, they know, is what Dean fought for, and Sam has to be grateful, it’s all that’s left now, with the pain of knowing.

Knowing that Dean would make a decision to damn Sam to a life without him.

And Sam will never stop trying to bring him back, but he isn’t gone yet, and sometimes, sometimes Sam lets out a scream he isn’t meaning to let out, or maybe he is. Dean isn’t sure.

And there’s fear and need and pain, fear and need and pain forever, and all Dean can do is tap Sam lightly on the shoulder or lift his beer a little.

_I’m ready._

And he lets Sam take him, lets Sam lead him back to the room and take him with a hunger built for so long that will never pass, especially now that Sam knows what it feels like for it to be sated, even temporarily.

And it’s not that Dean blames him, or even wants these nights to be over. He just knows that by giving Sam this final piece his brother will only miss him more, aching in new places that were never open and bleeding for people to see before.

But there’s no other way for them to be, not now, and when Sam breaks open Dean can only be there to stem the tide, hold back the flood of pain.

Sam always talks, he talks through everything, touching Dean and holding him and feeling the new cavernous emptiness where their secrets were kept, the way this was inevitable and unstoppable.

The way that Sam was always this. And the way that Dean would always give. Whatever was necessary. Whatever Sam thought he needed. Dean was built for it, and even now, here was proof.

The way that Dean would always help him let go. Always, until he couldn’t anymore.

*~*~*

Dean dies on a Tuesday and Sam sobs, holding him, huge, wrenching sobs into Wednesday morning, and it’s when Sam finally stops crying that he becomes truly scary, just as the Trickster has always shown it to be. He has a plan, he always has had one once he had given up on Dean letting himself be saved beforehand, and he hasn’t ever cared if it would mean his undoing or not.

He wastes no time.

He remembers Andy and Ava and all the rest, Max and even Jake, and in their memory he holds within him the power, the power to channel them through him, and so he does, forcing that which remains of Jake to help him blast the hellgate off its proverbial hinges.

Overhead, lightning crashes. Time speeds past Sam’s senses. Everything moves so quickly. He can see into hell, and he knows what Dean feels like, he knows everything he has ever needed to know about Dean. He can see where he needs to go, he can see--

\--everything--

But the air crackles with electricity and he has to focus on breathing because it suddenly takes everything he can muster just to keep air moving through his lungs, like breathing through a body that doesn’t want to allow it to happen.

He falls to the ground ( _no no no no_ ) and the air fills with white light. Against the light, he sees the outline of wings and feels immense pressure and sound and then there is nothing but the dark.

*~*~*

Castiel marches through the open gate, leaving Sam twitching with the force of the power he held to create the opening. Whether Sam Winchester lives is immaterial. Many things are immaterial. Though he knows that other forces are being unleashed, and when he feels the soul of Ruby pass through the gate going in the opposite direction, he recognizes her as the one who will ensure that whatever happens to Sam will be as hell itself wills it.

And this is all the more reason to continue with his--the--their--plan.

Castiel blasts Dean off of the rack himself, feels Dean tearing and shredding at the soul level, and it is only then that Castiel touches him, allowing his grace to fill the tears and abrasions in Dean’s essence.

Dean quakes under his hand and allows himself to be carried forth, head lolling, body twisting under Castiel’s grip.

 _Good._ The voice that Castiel does not yet know is Naomi’s filters through his mind and pushes light down his spine as they move through the darkness--joined.

*~*~*

Ruby has carried Sam away from the hellgate on the force of air itself. While he sleeps, she finds a vessel and returns to him on foot.

Already the feeling of connectedness he had with Dean is dissipating, and his memory is fading as well. Ruby knows how to help this, combing herbs and magic through his hair as he calls softly for his brother, broken in pieces, in ways he didn’t even know he could break.

Dean did try to warn him, she knows, and the way he has splintered is exquisite, exactly what she is seeking from him.

He’s still half asleep when she puts her cut wrist to his lips and he begins to suck, drinking down liquid shame.

*~*~*

Failure. He’s a failure. That’s what Sam knows when he wakes. He’s scared, too. He’s never seen the woman who sits beside him, almost possessive. But when she says, “Hey, Sam,” her voice is Ruby’s, there’s no mistaking it.

“It didn’t work,” she says.

He should ask her how--

But there is only one thing, and they both know it, so he doesn’t question. “Ruby, I…”

“Sam, are you thirsty?”

And he is. Oh, he is.

*~*~*

Castiel allows Dean to sleep. They are a hundred miles from the man’s grave, and the angel moves as he is instructed, tied as he is to the voices of his brethren.

Dean must be prepared.

*~*~*

In his sleep, Dean curls in on himself, reaches for a body that isn’t there. No words bubble forth from him, but anguish, yes. 

This, too, must be dealt with.

Castiel touches the handprint on Dean’s arm and watches him writhe in so many layers of feeling. The ear-splitting sounds of angel radio rip through him, but he doesn’t wake.

He is simply being adjusted.

Such is the way.

*~*~*

Dean continues to sleep for hours, then days. As he begins to wake, Castiel touches the handprint with varying amounts of force. Angel radio blasts through them both. 

And then comes the moment when Dean hears clearly enough and wakes.

Silently and with no preamble, Castiel puts a finger to his lips and Dean goes silent before he has a chance to process where he is or who is with him.

Castiel feels the pulse of Dean’s heart and how with every breath Dean’s body aches more to be with another human, perhaps the only human who has ever really known him.

But it cannot be this way.

There are other plans for each of them.

*~*~*

Sam didn’t know that the one thing that would dull his need for Dean would come to him just when he needed it most.

He knows that the thirst motivates so much that he does now. He is aware that if Dean were here his brother would only regard him with the same shame that courses through his veins, drips onto his lips.

But Dean will never see him again.

And so he drinks deeply.

*~*~*

Many days have passed. Dean is awake.

Castiel smiles, and Dean’s body lights up. 

“Hello, Dean. My name is Castiel.”

Soundlessly, Dean closes his eyes, overwhelmed.

Castiel allows him to sleep once more.

When he is deep enough in semi-consciousness, Castiel touches his own chest, allowing his body to open and his grace to seep out of the seams of him. It fills the room, and then fills Dean through the handprint. 

Dean writhes.

Such is the way, when being prepared.

*~*~*

There will be no mistakes made. 

When each brother calls out for the other, instead there is only one avenue to the power that suits them best. 

*~*~*

When two brothers, one dark and one light, are to meet again, there will be no missteps, there will be no miscalculations.

Castiel is too precise for that. An angel of his garrison has always had to be.

Castiel knows how to fight behind enemy lines no matter what plane of existence he is on. 

He will wait until with his very smile he lights up Dean Winchester’s entire world.

And when it is time, Dean will beg to serve, just as Castiel has before him.

He lets his grace seep through every crack.

Dean will crave angels’ grace before he even knows of the true nature of his task.

This will not be done incorrectly, for it cannot.

*~*~*

Castiel smiles again. “I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord, and I have gripped you tight and pulled you from perdition,” Castiel explains.

“Where’s Sam?”

Castiel shakes his head slightly.

Dean is hit with a blast of angel radio, and he sleeps.

*~*~*

Time is immaterial.

Castiel has seen his own fate, in so many different ways and from so many different angles. He knows that it is through this work that he will be elevated.

And Dean--Dean will quickly learn when he is asking the wrong question.

“Dean.” Castiel’s voice is dry, seemingly emotionless, though he is never without ambition. “You have a mission.”

He sends light through Dean again. 

“When it is completed you shall be rewarded. As shall I.”

*~*~*

Dean sleeps, and dreams of Sam. They are fitful dreams, almost tinged with fever. And perhaps he doesn’t want to have them. But he could have sworn that if anyone would rescue him it would have been his brother. 

Somehow.

*~*~*

Sam lolls on the bed in a fancy room, groggy and full of the feeling that he isn’t remembering--something.

Ruby kisses him on the lips, her lipstick smudged and slightly tinted with demon blood. He licks at her lips and then bites down.

*~*~*

“The rewards will be great, Dean,” Castiel is saying, but Dean is too tired, too spent, to focus. Everything is over-bright and tinted with a craving for the light. When Castiel leans down and touches the handprint, Dean still writhes, maybe now more than ever.

Castiel sits, dispassionate.

And waits.

*~*~*

If only--

Dean dreams. Dean dreams of the one who would have ended the world to bring him home.

But slowly, he’s having fewer dreams. Not just fewer dreams of Sam, but fewer dreams entirely.

And he asks himself why he trusts the one who talks to him when he’s awake.

The one with the mission.

The one named Castiel.

Yet that thought is quieted, for now, as his body remembers with a shiver of ecstatic pain whose grace flows through him now.

*~*~*

Even if Sam did wake up from his stupor… and Ruby was willing to call it a stupor now-- she did wonder who he would think of first--her, or the human.

She lets herself loom over him slightly and he reaches for her. He lets her take from him in payment what she herself craves, and he does not dream of the weeks before Dean’s death.

*~*~*

Sam, Dean has decided, is not coming. If he is going to get away from all this he’ll have to do it moment by moment on his own.

 _What if Sam’s dead?_ he thinks dimly. _What if this...angel...monster….angel...thing with the evil radio vibes….killed him?_

What if he _killed him_? 

This snaps Dean out of whatever fog he’s been in long enough for him to make a decision. 

He has to find out. No matter what he decides to do about Sam, he has to find this out. 

It’s the next day before he rouses again and realizes--whoever took Sam, wherever Sam is, his amulet is too. 

Well. So much for that. 

He martials his strength every second that he’s awake and aware of anything but Castiel’s grace. 

And when it is next offered to him, he spits in Castiel’s lowered face, wetness landing on the vessel’s nose. 

“You’ll never keep us apart. Not even death does that, you son of a bitch.” 

Dean doesn’t know how he knows that. But he does. 

And since he knows it, he tells himself Sam has to be alive. 

“You have a mission, Dean,” Castiel says in that dry monotone. “I have a mission.” 

“Yeah. Well. You can either get me back to Sam, or I can fuckin’ kill you on the way there.” 

With each word, Dean remembers more of himself, more of himself under Sam, and how Sam, he knows, would never have abandoned a task as large as this. 

Sam would never have abandoned Dean. 

Not without a hell of a lot of maneuvering by someone. Something. Some things, plural. 

Monsters. 

He doesn’t know who they are. He doesn’t know how things got this way. 

He’s just going to get to Sam. 

*~*~* 

Castiel may know how to fight, but he’s never fought a Winchester. No amount of light can keep Dean from seeking what he needs now. 

He twists the vessel’s wrist, pinning it behind Castiel and keeps at it until he hears a snap. The angel doesn’t care, but it will slow the thing down. 

He’s also pretty sure angels don’t come with knowledge of how to drive. They’ve been in one room too long, and Dean’s noticed. Teleport, sure. Maybe. Drive, no. 

He’s woozy and light-headed, which is a bad combination for getting behind a wheel, but he’s living proof that a Winchester can hotwire a car in their sleep, or after the worst hunt imaginable, and so while the creature is confused about what Dean’s done, he makes a run for it and steals the first car he sees. 

Like you do. 

He can find that kid anywhere. And he will. 

*~*~* 

Sam is so tired. So, so, so tired. Almost like he’s carrying the fatigue of so many people who aren’t him. 

_Maybe you are._ The voice in his head is cocky and strong, a Dean he hasn’t heard back there since he was first working through his feelings about the estrangement, at Stanford. 

But it dimly occurs to him that that voice in the back of his head, when it’s there, is rarely wrong. 

_Ruby_. 

He can’t engage her. Anyway, right now she’s sleeping beside him. They decided to stay in one place, because it’s not what Sam would do. And-- 

And he can see her keys from here. 

_Find me, Sam._

It doesn’t make any sense. Dean’s dead. Right? But… 

But the hellgate was open. He knows he got the hellgate open. Maybe-- 

He remembers when his father came barreling out of it on his own and he thinks--he hopes--oh, Jesus, Dean, maybe Dean got out too. 

_Find me, Sam._

And he will. 

*~*~* 

They’re pulled together, in the end, like it’s inevitable, like they’re two bodies barely allowed space to be apart anyway. Sam sees the car and knows. He just knows. Dean’s car. Not Dean’s car, but definitely Dean’s car. 

Dean’s slouched in the driver’s seat, half asleep, and shaking. 

That’s when Sam realizes he is, too. 

Jonesing. Bad. 

The two of them. And. 

Wait. 

Wait. 

Dean’s alive. And. And. 

And Sam’s been drinking demon blood like pain, letting himself be filled with it but Dean-- 

_Just get to him._

And Sam does, and shakes him awake, as awake as Dean’s going to get. 

Dean shakes his head no, and Sam thinks of all the times Dean was shocked into silence by pain and fear. 

Dean closes his eyes. He got here. Somehow. They got to each other. But he’s barely conscious. 

Sam grabs his hand and finger-spells into it. His name. 

Dean opens his eyes just slightly. 

Dean’s alive. Somehow. But half dead, too. 

Sam keeps moving anyway, signing the name sign Dean gave him once. 

Dean nods, and his eyes open a little more. Tracking it. 

“Okay, Sam. Yeah. Hi. Look, I--” 

“Sssh.” 

“Sam.” 

“You’re alive, Dean.” 

“Course I-- Oh.” 

“Dean, I tried everything.” And Sam breaks open, suddenly and with force. “I tried everything.” 

“Something worked,” Dean says. 

And then he passes out. 

*~*~* 

Sam curls around him in the car, and he feels the force of the way Dean shakes, and they reverberate through his own body. 

And he thinks of a simpler time, when the women in his life had loved him instead of using him, when they honored his boundaries. He thinks of Jessica, and holding back her hair when she was just sick enough to need it, and he thinks, he doesn’t know what happened to Dean, not really, but he knows what the shakes mean. 

Who had gotten to him? 

Who had disrupted Sam’s plan? 

No one who ever disrupted Sam’s plans did so for reasons that helped anyone. 

Sam was a good planner. And he’d had a plan and it had been disrupted and now Dean was-- and he was-- 

But Dean was alive. 

And that was important. 

The knowledge tore through him--it hadn’t been him after all. 

But it could be him now. 

He held tighter to Dean, and he whispered and sang, and when Dean pulled away, awake again and sweating bullets Sam let go, pained but understanding.

Something had happened to Dean, below or above, it didn’t matter where. 

They stayed in the car, huddled and cold, like so many nights when they’d been out of gas and too tired to trek on foot, or through a haunted town. 

And when Dean could talk again he said, “Sam, it was worse, it was worse,” and Sam said quickly, “I know.” Sam swallows hard. “I’ve got you now, Dean,” He closes his eyes for a moment, exhausted, and he only sees Ruby, lips bloodied. 

So he asks. 

“Was it...was it blood? What was it, Dean? What did they do? Can you...even… Jesus. I’ve got you.” 

“Don’t know, Sam. Light. It was light. I was supposed to be a vessel. This...they had a plan. They had a plan for us.” 

“Fuck the plan!” Sam growls, and Dean chuckles dryly, with a wheeze, like shifting leaves. “I had a plan too,” Sam says. “I was going to get to you.” 

“I know.” 

“No matter what it took.” 

“I know, Sammy. Sammy...I’m cold.” 

And they just are, no blankets or anything, and one of them will have to start to drive. 

Dean’s been--in the ground--in the fucking ground--and that’s still abundantly clear. The less said of it the better. And so Sam takes the driver’s seat, helping Dean to the passenger side and starts the car. 

They’ve found each other now. That’s all that matters in the world. 

*~*~* 

It takes weeks for both of them to recover, roughing it together under motel blankets and sheets, and months for Dean to feel safe again. Even with Sam. They crisscross the country once they can get mobile again, knowing that demons and whatever that angel-thing alike have fled now that they’ve found each other. But they mostly just need to stay alive, and memory of a withdrawal that felt like it was tearing them apart stays with them. 

Something told them not to call Bobby. Not this time. They know that what they need to get through it is each other, and that’s exactly why they were kept apart. 

There are moments when even Dean bursts into tears, especially when he talks about the things Castiel said. And did. The things Castiel did. The way he thought Dean would-- just-- 

Dean doesn’t want to be touched again, not when so many times it was what this creature wanted, this creature trying to play God. 

But sometimes Dean lets Sam take his hand again, like the day he fingerspelled his name and brought Dean home to himself. 

To himself. 

*~*~* 

Dean isn’t sure what he wants to do. They aren’t hairsbreadth-close like they used to be. Sometimes Dean takes off in the Impala for a few days. After all, they’ve survived it before and they can again. 

Sam likes blue cars, and sometimes he calls Dean and tells him the make and model he’s got now. 

The phone check-ins serve double duty. They keep each of them on an even keel. 

They’re stronger together, but they won’t let it hurt them as badly as it did when they couldn’t even manage this much time apart. 

When it was literally used to torture them. 

They won’t go through that again. 

A healthy distance, that’s what they work on now, a little bit of space but not so much that it hurts like then. 

They decide on it, and they make it work, together. 

Just like all the best decisions they’ve ever made. 

*~*~* 

Castiel does not become the God he thought he would inevitably become. And Ruby slinks back to a dungeon and starts from scratch, spared her life by both Sam and several denizens of hell who give her points for creativity. Demon blood. Really. They’re going to do further experiments with it. 

After all, Sam Winchester has earned his place rightfully, and to outsmart him they’ll have to get truly creative. Even more so. 

*~*~* 

Every now and then before Dean leaves for a few days, he smiles a little and pulls his amulet from under his shirt. He might give Sam a kiss on the cheek or on the forehead, and it means more than words ever could. 

As for Sam, he carries Dean with him always. It’s just the way things are. 


End file.
